Web Ad Layout and Placement Strategies for Maximum Clickthroughs

You've optimized your keywords — what else can you do to ensure people are clicking the ads on your page (and making you money each time they do)? There are no absolute rules about placing advertisements and which layout options to choose, but Eric Giguere has some general guidelines to follow to maximize your site's potential.

Keyword optimization ensures that the right advertisements are shown on your
pages, but even well-targeted ads won't make you any money if no one clicks
on them. After all, the fundamental premise behind pay-per-click advertising
systems like AdSense for content is this: You get paid only when ads are clicked
on. Ad layout and placement are therefore extremely important to your earnings
as an AdSense publisher. Although there are no absolute rules about how to place
advertisements and which layout options to choose, there are some general
guidelines to follow—and that's what we're going to discuss.

Don't Entice Your Visitors to Click

First, a warning: Enticing or confusing visitors to click advertisements on
your pages is specifically against the AdSense terms and conditions. Google's
ad program depends on its capability to deliver well-targeted traffic to advertiser
sites, and having people click willy-nilly on ads with no specific intention
of actually seeing what the advertiser has to offer undermines the
whole AdSense program. So don't ask visitors to click on your ads. In
fact, Google says you can label them only as "Advertisements" or "Sponsored
Links."

NOTE

Bigger sites such as Amazon.com are part of the AdSense Premium program,
whose terms are different from the regular AdSense for content program, so
they're allowed to use wording that regular AdSense publishers can't
use.